A TYPICAL PILAWIN SCENE.
The forest tract to which Count Potocki has given the name of Pilawin (a title connected with the ancient family crest) comprises about seven thousand acres enclosed by an eight-foot timber paling, replaced, however, in front of the shooting-lodge by wire fencing. The area of the whole forest from which Pilawin is cut off is about thirty thousand acres.
MAP OF PILAWIN.
Passing through the ponderous rustic entrance gates, cleverly constructed of birch and aspen poles, and surmounted by some fine pairs of antlers and the Potocki crest, we first came upon a spacious open enclosure containing a couple of fine bears, now about two years old, which were captured as cubs in Lithuania by a friend of the Count. In the enclosure are a couple of tall dead birch-trees, up which the bears are in the habit of climbing. They are also provided with a kind of cavern, or den, in which they spend much of their time when the weather is hot; and they likewise have a bath.
THE SHOOTING-LODGE AT PILAWIN.
Leaving these guardians, a few yards farther on we reached the picturesque and gabled shooting-lodge which was to form our residence for the next ten days; the Count and his family being quartered at another residence, at Pisczow, some four miles distant on the farther side of the Kieff road.
This shooting-lodge—which is in telephonic communication with all the other residences of the Count—is picturesquely situated on the western side of the Pilawin preserve, and overlooks in front a wide stretch of open cornfields, bordered by dense forest of Scotch pine, oak, and birch, with a few clumps of larch; while at the back the forest comes up to within a few yards of the building itself.
